Who are your free favorite philosophers?

[LegionOnomaMoi]

They don't need to be identified as such; Jesus, Muhammad, Dawkins, etc. Whose philosophies have influenced you the most?

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

By "free" I mean that their perspectives are freely available, as opposed to modern philosophers whose works require buying books, monographs, journals subscriptions, etc.

 

[Sultan Of Swing]

They don't need to be identified as such; Jesus, Muhammad, Dawkins, etc. Whose philosophies have influenced you the most?

Well if I can choose Jesus then I will.

Aside from the Bible, I actually find some of Nietzsche's ideas quite thought-provoking. I need to read him properly though.

I enjoy listening to John Piper, though he's a preacher, but if Dawkins can be included on the list as a biologist than so can Piper, really.

EDIT: Oh, and Charles Spurgeon, he's good too.

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

(I find myself feeling a bit chagrined that I don't have a ready answer,)

 

[Jayhawker Soule]

… maybe Heschel, Kaplan, and Popper.

 

[Revoltingest]

I've never paid for a philosopher, so they're all free to me. I have no favorites. I just see concepts here & there which I like. Philosophers needn't be paragons of virtue or intellectual rigor....they needn't even be right. I've found inspiration from Wolfgan Pauli, Ayn Rand, Richard Feynman, Kurt Vonnegut, Edwin Abbott, Douglas Adams, & invisible gorillas.

 

[MD]

Zoroaster, Buddha, Schopenhauer, Descartes, Nietzsche and of course Chalmers

 

[BSM1]

Besides the obvious,--Yeshua, Buddha, etc.-- Erich Fromm, Kahlil Gibran, and Eckhart Tolle come to mind.

 

[StarryNightshade]

I like Kierkegaard, Buddha, and Spinoza.

 

[Chakra]

Ramanuja, Desika, and I also like Spinoza as well.

 

[Nietzsche]

Nietzsche; mostly for his Overman concept. The rejection of societal morality and discovering for ones' self what is good & what is bad. Then there is the Eternal Return, which ties in beautifully with my status as an Asatru. I also find appeal in his interpretation of the Dionysian notion. And lastly, I feel precisely the same way regarding shame. Shame is weakness, something to be discarded.

 

[GoodbyeDave]

Confucius, Plato, and Thomas Reid.

 

[LegionOnomaMoi]

I've never paid for a philosopher, so they're all free to me.

Those with PhDs in philosophy (which means. oddly, that they have doctorates of philosophy in philosophy) have about the hardest time of any with PhDs to obtain a professorship, so most are prostitutes. They're very good. They won't stop philosophizing until you pay them treble or use Hemlock (that's how they got the famous Greek prostitute Socrates).

I have no favorites.

I paid you to say me! I'm having that check canceled.

I just see concepts here & there which I like.

Fair enough. I don't create that many threads (at least relative to the number of posts I have; 61 vs. 7,000+) and one was on Nolan's batman trilogy and philosophy.

I've found inspiration from Wolfgan Pauli

It was his matrices that attracted you from the start, am I right? I'm right. More seriously, what did you find inspiring? I ask first because I have found that, in general, the scientists who tend to be the most acquainted with philosophy and its importance tend to be physics whose work relates to quantum theory or cosmology, but this is fairly new. Not physicists being philosophically learned, but that all academics were polymaths, but this slowly changed up to the 20th century and then began to change very quickly. Pauli is of the generation of physicists (and scientists) who were better scientists, more specialized, and less familiar with other fields. Einstein, for example, was well-known for his deep concern for the philosophy of science, physics, and theory as well as metaphysics and after he wrote his famous EPR paper (or rather, developed the idea and then saw it ruined, in his mind, by his co-authors), Pauli wrote to (I think) Heisenberg lamenting this latest "garbage" from that antique, obsolete physicists Einstein. Unlike with Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Bohm, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, etc., (the first and second generation of physicists after the advent of quantum physics) I haven't read anything by Pauli. I don't even know the names of any titles (which is embarrassing). So I would be interested to know what I've missed so that I can obtain it and pretend this conversation never took place and that I'd read Pauli years ago.

Richard Feynman

Surely you must be joking Mr.

Douglas Adams

I was reviewing a calculus self-help/self-study book someone on this discussion board recommended and delighted to find that the author had set up one of the problems such that the answer was 42, and in the margins the author referenced Douglas and stated that the reader now knew that the question to which 42 was the answer was (something I can't recall- the derivative of something or the integral or whatever).

invisible gorillas.

Janet or Friedrich von Schlieffen-Heiffen Gesuntenheiden?

 

[Revoltingest]

Those with PhDs in philosophy (which means. oddly, that they have doctorates of philosophy in philosophy) have about the hardest time of any with PhDs to obtain a professorship, so most are prostitutes. They're very good. They won't stop philosophizing until you pay them treble or use Hemlock (that's how they got the famous Greek prostitute Socrates).


I paid you to say me! I'm having that check canceled.


Fair enough. I don't create that many threads (at least relative to the number of posts I have; 61 vs. 7,000+) and one was on Nolan's batman trilogy and philosophy.


It was his matrices that attracted you from the start, am I right? I'm right. More seriously, what did you find inspiring? I ask first because I have found that, in general, the scientists who tend to be the most acquainted with philosophy and its importance tend to be physics whose work relates to quantum theory or cosmology, but this is fairly new. Not physicists being philosophically learned, but that all academics were polymaths, but this slowly changed up to the 20th century and then began to change very quickly. Pauli is of the generation of physicists (and scientists) who were better scientists, more specialized, and less familiar with other fields. Einstein, for example, was well-known for his deep concern for the philosophy of science, physics, and theory as well as metaphysics and after he wrote his famous EPR paper (or rather, developed the idea and then saw it ruined, in his mind, by his co-authors), Pauli wrote to (I think) Heisenberg lamenting this latest "garbage" from that antique, obsolete physicists Einstein. Unlike with Einstein, Bohr, Dirac, Bohm, Schrödinger, Heisenberg, etc., (the first and second generation of physicists after the advent of quantum physics) I haven't read anything by Pauli. I don't even know the names of any titles (which is embarrassing). So I would be interested to know what I've missed so that I can obtain it and pretend this conversation never took place and that I'd read Pauli years ago.


Surely you must be joking Mr.


I was reviewing a calculus self-help/self-study book someone on this discussion board recommended and delighted to find that the author had set up one of the problems such that the answer was 42, and in the margins the author referenced Douglas and stated that the reader now knew that the question to which 42 was the answer was (something I can't recall- the derivative of something or the integral or whatever).


Janet or Friedrich von Schlieffen-Heiffen Gesuntenheiden?

Isn't "42" always the answer to everything, Majikfondel?

 

[Baladas]

It's hard to decide. I like many philosophers, but if I had to choose only three, I suppose I would choose Laozi, Zhuangzi and Heraclitus.

 

[Acintya_Ash]

Jiva Goswami, Madhvacharya, Srila Prabhupada, CS Lewis...

 

[Bunyip]

Douglas Adams, Grant Naylor and Terry Pratchet.

Now sure, Grant Naylor is a bit of a cheat, it was two guys - so Lewis Carol if anyone protests.

 

[Bunyip]

Jiva Goswami, Madhvacharya, Srila Prabhupada, CS Lewis...

Oh and C.S. Lewis for sure.

 

[Twilight Hue]

Alan Watts

Samuel Clemans

Father Jack

 

[Penumbra]

Camus, Sagan, Emerson

There are so many my answer would probably differ a bit each time I'm asked.